Sami in The Guardian

Must have got it first in Oz before everybody else wakes up!

http://http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/06/sami-hyypia-brighton-and-hove-albion

Sounds as though the frenzied attacking pace of the Oscar year has been noted.

“I want them to do well,” is all Hyypia has to say about the Anfield club, and when a man who stands at 6ft 4in tall and has a jaw you could break timber on stares at you in silence, it really is best to move on.

The Tassie Seagull said:

Must have got it first in Oz before everybody else wakes up!

http://http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/06/sami-hyypia-brighton-and-hove-albion

Click to expand...

Fraid not .....Fixt....

Nope ur not the first!

Is he touting for another job.?

Also in the mail..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...mier-League-ready-Brighton-promoted-last.html

And the Times as well

Good interview. Let's see how his football style stacks up.

Read the one in the Daily Mail and it certainly sounds impressive but The Guardian link comes up not available.

Ok. This I like the sound of.


“I like a possession game but a possession game with the purpose to score a goal. Keeping the ball is easy when you do it in your own half but we will try to be a little more direct. Transitions are very important nowadays and we have been working on quick transitions from defensive to offensive. From what I saw from last year, that did not happen a lot. It was keep ball and we didn’t even try to go forward. Now hopefully it will be different.”

Nice to see a bit from David Burke in there as well

and just in case the link is not working...


http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/06/sami-hyypia-brighton-and-hove-albion


“When you move somewhere it is important you get to know the area,” Sami Hyypia says as he confirms that he recently visited the Lord Nelson Inn, a pub located near Brighton’s North Laine area renowned for serving locally brewed real ale. He was spotted there by a group of the town’s sports reporters and the hope for Hyypia is that they will largely be writing good things about him in the coming months.

Appointed Brighton manager on a three-year contract in June, the spotlight well and truly falls on the towering, blond Finn on Saturday when his side take on Sheffield Wednesday at the Amex Stadium. The opening day of a new season is a time for hope and optimism but by Hyypia’s own admission there is trepidation in the home ranks following a pre-season in which Brighton have lost three of their last four warm-up matches, seen two of their most influential performers in Matthew Upson and Leonardo Ulloa join Leicester and, as yet, not recruited the required players, specifically in attack, to make a push for promotion from the Championship appear feasible. As Hyypia says: “We’re not ready.”

But the 40-year-old is not panicking. Instead he speaks with the calm authority that characterised him as a player, most notably during a decade-long spell at Liverpool when he won the Champions League on a memorable night in Istanbul and established himself as one of the finest defenders in England. Returning to these shores five years after he departed from Merseyside, Hyypia is ready to prove his credentials once again.

Brighton’s sense of ambition drew him back, a club that has reached the play-offs in each of the last two seasons, first under Gus Poyet and then Oscar García, and who maintain the infrastructure and desire, driven by chairman Tony Bloom and chief executive Paul Barber, to go further. But, as Hyypia admits with an embarrassed laugh, the south coast also appealed because he simply had nowhere else to go after being sacked by Bayer Leverkusen in April.

It had been a sudden rise for him at the Bundesliga club, with the former centre-back appointed manager in May 2013 after sharing the post with Sascha Lewandowski shortly after retiring as a player there. The pair led Leverkusen to third place and Champions League qualification in the 2012-13 season, and after a promising start to the following campaign it appeared Hyypia would repeat the feat by himself. But after a run of one win in 12 games, he was shown the door.

“I was grateful that the club gave me this opportunity because it’s not normal that 10 months after finishing as a player you are head coach of a team in the Bundesliga,” Hyypia reflects. “The last two months there I learned so much, it was a valuable time for me. Every manager needs to go through that kind of period. In an ideal world I go through that period and we would get back to winning ways, but that didn’t happen.

“But we were still fourth or fifth in the league so if it had happened the other way – the beginning of the season was bad but then we picked up – everyone would have been buzzing. So maybe we overachieved and I was the victim of that. But I know that in this profession [getting sacked] can happen.”

Brighton offers Hyypia a second chance to prove he has what it takes to make the transition from stellar player to successful manager, and it is clear that he is fully focused on the task of leading the Seagulls back into the top flight. This means immersing himself in the area and its landmarks and making it clear during this interview that, Leverkusen aside, he has no desire to reflect on his past teams, which means no discussions about what it was like to be managed by Roy Hodgson at international level or of his time at Liverpool. “I want them to do well,” is all Hyypia has to say about the Anfield club, and when a man who stands at 6ft 4in tall and has a jaw you could break timber on stares at you in silence, it really is best to move on.

Hyypia is far more expansive when it comes to outlining exactly how he plans to stamp his mark on Brighton. Not surprisingly for someone who consistently excelled at the heart of Liverpool’s back four, there is a desire for his players to show “mental and physical strength” when defending, but Hyypia also wants his team to attack with purpose and poise, and certainly play quicker than they did during García’s sole season in charge, when sixth place was achieved at near meandering pace. The strategy sounds ambitiously broad but Hyypia is adamant it can be done.

“If you are tough that doesn’t mean you can’t play football,” he insists. “You need to be strong and aggressive in this league – the Championship is end-to-end stuff. Players need to be willing to put their foot in, but then you need to put the handbrake on and think. To think how can we hurt the opposition with football, not kicking.

“I like a possession game but a possession game with the purpose to score a goal. Keeping the ball is easy when you do it in your own half but we will try to be a little more direct. Transitions are very important nowadays and we have been working on quick transitions from defensive to offensive. From what I saw from last year, that did not happen a lot. It was keep ball and we didn’t even try to go forward. Now hopefully it will be different.”

Given this is not how Leverkusen performed under Hyypia, with the team more reserved than rapier when in possession, there is a sense that the Finn is making a conscious effort to move on fully from what was ultimately a thwarted experience in Germany.

“I’ve always been an observer type; when I’m in a room I like to see what people do and say and learn from that,” he says. “As a player I was the same; I try to see what the manager does in different situations and pick those things in my work. I’m the kind of guy who wants to learn and develop myself every week and I’ve had that from a young age because I wasn’t always the best talent so it was important that I worked hard to improve.”

Leverkusen’s loss could well be Brighton’s gain.

Our success with gus and oscar was built on defensive solidity. Why oh why would you decide to sacrifice this pushing incapable full backs up.

Nonsensical and complete failure at friendly level